On June 28th and 29th, members of the Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative met at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania to move forward several aspects of the project. The Chesapeake Monitoring Cooperative is comprised of four groups with the goal of bringing together non-traditional and volunteer monitoring data throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed and integrating the data with state agencies and the Chesapeake Bay Program.

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This blog is part of the Basin Report Card Initiative: a partnership between the World Wide Fund (WWF) and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) The Orinoco River Basin report card was released on July 6th, 2016 in Bogota, Colombia. This is the first report card in South America, and the first report card developed as a part of the partnership between WWF and UMCES.

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"Across and through the Bay: Rio, Niteroi, and Guanabara expeditions" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Em 20 de Junho de 2016, Bill Dennison and Dave Nemazie, e eu viajamos para o Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, para a segunda seção do workshop com as partes interessadas para desenvolver o Boletim de Saúde Ambiental (Report Card) da Baía de Guanabara.

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"Environmental Literacy for Guanabara Bay, Brazil" (Portuguese translation by João Paulo Coimbra) Série ‘Aprendizado Ambiental' (Environmental Literacy Series) • A Baía de Guanabaraé uma formação costeira tropical (22°S) com uma abertura restrita e que forma um porto natural no sudeste do Brasil com clima de monções.

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On June 20th 2016, Bill Dennison, Dave Nemazie, and I traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the next stakeholder workshop to develop the Guanabara Bay Report Card. We convened the workshop on June 23rd in neighboring Niteroi, a city across the Bay from Rio de Janeiro. There were some of the same participants as our first stakeholder workshop as well as a wider group of stakeholders from additional universities and municipal government offices.

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What is the definition of retreat? We all immediately think of military retreats in battle. But, there are two other definitions of retreat that relate to our annual work retreat: • a quiet or secluded place in which one can rest and relax - this is what most people intend when they go on a retreat or retreat to a vacation spot. Work retreats can be restful and relaxing because they bring you out of your day-to-day work space and provide a new creative arena to focus on.

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On Friday, June 10th, Judy O’Neil and I participated in the second annual Billion Oyster Projects Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (BOP CCERS) - Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education (STAM) Research Symposium on Governors Island.

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‘Environmental Literacy’ series … • Guanabara Bay is a tropical (22°S) embayment with a restricted opening which forms a natural harbor in Southeast Brazil with a monsoonal/savanna climate. • The watershed around Guanabara Bay is an internationally iconic location, including metropolitan areas like Rio de Janeiro, Niteroi and Sao Goncalo, beaches like Copacabana and Ipanema, and sights like Sugarloaf and Corcovado.

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The week of June 6th brought strong winds to the east coast along with the 2nd annual workshop meeting of Billion Oyster Projects Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (BOP CCERS) project members. This was a weeklong series of events and meetings in NYC that gave project leaders both a chance to reflect on the year's achievements and to tweak project goals for the third, and final year of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project.

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I attended the biennial National Water Quality Monitoring Conference in Tampa, Florida from Monday, May 2nd through Friday, May 6th. This was my first time attending the conference and by the end, I realized it was a conference I want to attend many times again. The 2016 conference was held at the Tampa Convention Center, a large complex on the waterfront, with nearby hotels and restaurants for attendees.

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